


it'll be a cold day in hell

by unicyclehippo



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, basically a what if cassandra fic, but dont worry there will be gay stuff at some point, but just so yall know, canonically violent, cassandra escapes the briarwoods, i love cassandra i can write this if i want to thank u very much i hope u enjoy it, i want it to get to the point where they must either kiss or combust, im adding these tags bc i like to write these stories that have a little bit of everything, its getting a teeny bit violent, nb keyleth, one of the twins is trans im leaning vax, percy doesn't, that Jane Austen type shit, that slow growing regard turns admiration, thats it that’s the only two choices, the concept u must keep in mind is painful slowburn, the desire to help the other bc they want nothing more than to see them succeed, the touches that are always this side of proper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2019-08-20 12:31:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: A pair of identical half-elves meet under the sour light of a yellowed moon, making plans for a future they're working hard to summon. A goliath and a gnome - a most curious pair - fight side to side. In an ale-soaked bar room, a bard plays a jaunty tune and does what he does second best: entertain. His predominant talent will be on display later, a one-on-one performance. A tall half-elf, wide-eyed and flame-haired, watches with fascination as the music calls forth images, a splash of light and swirling colours. And a white-haired girl sits in a prison cell plotting her escape. (or, what if cassandra escaped the briarwoods and percy hadn't)





	1. The Grey Hold

The cold comes moments before she wakes, as always. It strangles her, coats her throat with the sensation of a hundred icicles forming in her throat, in her shoulders, her head, her neck, beneath the skin as though the cold is in her bones and growing, stabbing outwards. Panic grips her—it always does, she’s ashamed to admit even in the relative privacy of her own mind—and causes her limbs to seize and lock in place.

The moment passes.

She cracks her eyelids open; the ice that has frozen on her lashes cracks and splinters, falling harmlessly away, and she is free to open her eyes and see above her the familiar rough-stone ceiling.

Everything is as it was.

She is safe, though admittedly the definition of the word has become rather relative recently. More to the point, she is in no more danger than when she felt asleep.

What little warmth her body can muster returns to her and she forces a long breath out, despite the way her lungs protest. Pulls a breath in. Repeats the process several times until the pulse pounding in her ears settles from _thunderous_ to merely _hammering_. It helps when no chips of ice scatter into her lungs; no sudden flood of freezing water rushes in when she parts her lips. Her nightmare was just that; a nightmare, and no more.

Glancing about, she can see that her cell is still empty. Still just her, aside from the mostly skeletonised form of a giant rat she had named Anders on her first night in the cell. He’d already been dead at that point, luckily.

‘Casper,’ a quiet voice croons. ‘Hey hey hey, Casper.’

In the cell opposite her own, a stick clangs against the iron bars reminiscent of an enthusiastic and talentless child learning a percussive instrument. The sound echoes down the long hall and, like a morning alarm, it starts off a series of distant mutterings and groans and an eerie wail that makes ice-cold shivers drip down her spine.

‘Don’t play coy, Casper,’ the voice cackles, and a grating laugh begins to build in the back of its throat. ‘I can see you. I can _smell_ you. Lookin’ forward to mealtime—gonna find you, gonna _bite_ ,’ he says, and yellowed teeth snap from behind the bars. ‘Something tasty and tender,’ he croons, and the laughter coughs up his throat and rises to a high-pitched giggle like a hyena’s laugh. ‘Something fresh and young and _sweet_.’

The clacking begins again as from within the shadows of the cell—too dark for her human eyes to see through—something moves. A burly arm twitches, cracks the stick against the bars. Following the hint of form into the dark, a long, misshapen face is finally visible: thin, with sunken, sharp cheeks and vivid yellow eyes; matted fur in patches over an uncomfortably _almost_ human face; and a panting tongue set in an open mouth, unable to close around far too many teeth for its human jaw.

The one he calls Casper stands.

Tall and pale, unhealthily thin, the girl is little more than bones and determination. She wears the determination well—a glint in sapphire-cut eyes and a sharpness to her angles that accents the cutting edge of her words—but it does little to protect her from the chill that seeps up from the floor, through a ratty bed of planks and scavenged straw.

‘Morning, Tovik,’ she drawls, voice as cold as the ice that had gripped her only moments earlier. ‘If this is about what I said to you yesterday, I apologise.’ Casper’s eyes are like chips of ice and insincere, as insincere as the smirk that curls across thin lips. ‘I had _no idea_ you were so sensitive regarding the circumstances of your birth.’

‘Huh?’

She clicks her tongue, rolls her eyes. ‘Right—you’re _stupid,_ ’ she says as though reminding herself of the fact. ‘I’ll say it again more slowly so you can understand.’ Stepping up to the wall of iron bars, her pale, scarred fingers rest against the interior of the iron bars that are rough with rust and a thick slime that slicks from the dripping roof. She is careful not to put her fingers through the space between bars. ‘I am _sorry_ ,’ Casper says, ‘that I brought up the fact that you’re a measly little runt so weak your pack couldn’t bear the sight of you. And that your nose looks like a squashed rat stitched onto your face. And that your tail is missing more bristles than the kitchen broom. And that your face always looks like it needs a good kicking. And that everything must’ve got mixed up with your insides because your shit comes out of your mouth each time you speak. And I’m really sorry that I said you can’t go ten minutes without laughing because it helps you forget you’re all alone, what with your voice bouncing off the _cavernous_ expanse of your empty skull. Ah, shit. Cavernous means really big and empty.’

The chance to get these insults in before her assured death at mealtime is, in her opinion, worth it. It is an added delight to watch Tovik throw himself at the bars as she speaks, finally forgetting himself in his fury and lashing out, only to roar in pain as the enchantment on the bats sparks with crackling blue energy and sends him flying into the back wall with a _crunch_ of bone.

Casper sits back on her throne of soft, rotted planks and settles in for the wait—both for Tovik to recover and for the rest of her plan to be set in motion.

* * *

On the cusp of the swamps of the K’tawl and the direct cut of the Silvercut Roadway squats the mammoth severe form of the Grey Hold, apparently unfazed by the relentless seep of the murky waters into the lower cells, the swamp intent on claiming it as its prize. Sheer walls of smooth, grey stone lift out of the muck some thirty feet tall. Two towers – one each at the North and South end of the compound – rise taller and on the topmost level of those towers burn great fires to welcome and lead the weary traveller and the occasional caravans out of the swamps. The only gate leading in and out of the Hold stands open on the eastern wall, its portcullis lowered on chains. And within the gate—standing in neat grids, the roads paved with baked-clay bricks, each corner lit by a torch or lamppost—there is a small town of mainly crafters and soldiers and the occasional merchant niche enough to require their own shop.

The sleek, well-maintained armour and weapons of the many, _many_ keen-eyed guards of the Silverfern Company ought to have been her first hint; the pristine upkeep of the Hold should have been her second.

Casper shouldn’t have needed more than those two hints—she shouldn’t have needed two hints at all—to understand that the denizens of the Grey Hold didn’t care much for anyone who sets so much as a whisker over that line that separates legality and illegality and yet…

She had been overconfident.

 _Stupid_.

In the last year, she had learned a lot. Mostly the hard lessons one learns on the street—don’t be fooled by a kind face, don’t trust anyone whose nails are cracked and blue, don’t keep all your money in one place, don’t turn up your nose at a free meal no matter how burned it is—but also the less spoken lessons. What they boil down to, essentially, is that line between legality and illegality? Is stranger than she had ever known. Warped. Easily manipulated. That some folk dance across it as easily as they might a Spring Bloom ribbon and will think less of its importance than they might of the ribbons’. The line is thinned to such a degree as to be more or less negligible— _especially_ in places so close to cities with the kind of reputation that Stilben has.

As it turns out, no one told the Silverfern Company that. Respectable, incorruptible souls each and every one of them.

That, or the paltry sum of ten silvers that she had offered them to look the other way wasn’t _quite_ enough to let her off the proverbial hook—not when she had been caught with her hand deep into a gold-lined pocket that did not belong to her.

All that is to say, now she is stripped of all the possessions she had worked so very hard to acquire and dropped into the bottom of a prison cell.

Again.

The only difference—a subtle one, yet noticeable to someone who has spent time enough in a cell to have an opinion on the matter—is that _this_ cell is, at all times, flooded with a good half-inch of water that smells of silt, rotted vegetables, and sulphur.

After three months, she’s accustomed to the stench and to the never quite being clean. She’s accustomed too to the ache that lingers in her shoulders and arms, her back and legs… her entire body, really, from working on the westward extension of the Hold where she has been assigned. She has earned blisters on top of her blisters and a lifelong distaste for any structures involving grey masonry.

After three months, she’s ready to get _out_ of this place—once and for all.

She has a plan.

Friends are as common in the Grey Hold as honest folk are. Many of the prisoners were mercenaries and the like—adventurers, hunters, bandits, thieves—who came from or through Stilben and the Warden treats any mention of that city as much as proof of guilt as she regards mud proof of the swamp. Casper can’t much fault the Warden on that because pretty much everyone in the place is some mixture of scoundrel, skulker, sneak, and downright bastard.

Casper included.

The Warden included.

Dreg included.

Being big and mean is a lucrative trade in the Grey Hold; there is no end to the mischief a half-orc as burly as Dreg can get into—and out of. Even the guards are generally unwilling to tangle with her.

That had been the draw, originally.

What _holds_ Casper to Dreg is the gleam of cleverness she glimpses now and again in her muddy brown eyes. Plenty of big, mean brutes work in the prison. It’s a lucrative trade. Everyone knows that. Dreg pretends to be one of them, but Casper can see the truth. The half-orc is clever enough to know when to play dumb and when to talk her way out of trouble—and best of all, she’s patient enough to wait.

What holds Dreg to Casper is a promise made bold as brass in the middle of the work day. With her pale face upturned to the sun and no tell showing how her clever mind and clever eyes were picking out guard positions and routines, Casper had smiled at the half-orc, offered a portion of her bread, and said,

‘ _I’m getting out of this place, Dreg. Soon. I have a plan, even.’_

_‘A plan.’_

_‘It helps if you do._ ’ Casper had turned to her and held out a manacled hand. ‘ _Help me and I’ll take you with me_.’

Now, in the stone food hall, Dreg sits across from Casper with the face of someone who has been told to pretend they’re not worried; stiff and still, face locked into an expression of neutrality, all which screams subtle. Worry swirls in her eyes, which dart to the side over Casper’s shoulder and back.

Casper has to look away, her nerves already twisting her gut.

It’s a stupid plan.

It _has_ to work.

‘Tovik’s looking.’

Casper nods. Scrapes a spoonful of gruel out of her bowl and wonders as she eats whether she should bother. Something tells her she’s going to be puking it up again soon. ‘How does he look?’

‘Mean. Stupid. Angry.’

‘Same as always, then.’

Dreg snorts. ‘Suppose so. Meaner, stupider, angrier, I guess.’ She sets her wooden cup down on the table with a dull _thunk_. Turns a thoughtful squint on Casper. ‘More stupid?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Stupider or more stupid?’

‘Either. They’re both correct.’

‘Really?’ Dreg frowns. ‘More stupid sounds, I dunno. Fancier. Using two words where one would do just fine.’

Casper’s lips twitch. ‘Perhaps. But they’re both correct.’

‘Good to know.’ Dreg’s eyes flicker again—over Casper’s shoulder and back. ‘Here he comes. Thanks for your last piece of advice ever, I guess. I’ll put it to good use.’

‘I intend to live,’ Casper tells her, and she hopes that it isn’t too tempting for Fate.

A meaty hand crashes down onto her shoulder; it’s heavy and smells unpleasantly of rotting meat and the worst, most stagnant and concentrated of the muck and must here in the Hold. Clawed fingernails dig into her skin hard enough to pinch. With only a split second to react, Casper uses it to regret the choices that led her to this place and moment. Two choices in particular: the first, where she had decided that her best chance of getting out of this place was through the infirmary; and the second, where she had decided that Tovik the Brute—his Lawbearer witnessed name according to all sources—would be the one to get her there.

Tovik yanks her off her stool by the collar. The fabric of her shirt drags up with the vicious tug and when it tightens around her throat she forgets herself and starts to fight back, every instinct in her body rejecting the all-too-familiar sensation. Wriggling like a snake out of his hold, relief lends her strength and she clocks him hard across the face and drives a brutally sharp elbow to the swell of his cheek. Though she is smaller than Tovik, she is by no means a small girl and the blow sends him reeling back.

‘Oh,’ Tovik growls, shakes his head clear. ‘I’m gonna enjoy this.’ The whites of his eyes fill with an unnatural yellow gleam, black pupils shrinking to pinpricks. His nostrils flare. He sinks down on his long, gangly legs, powerful thighs bunching. His shoulders hunch and bulge with tense muscles. ‘I’ll chew on your bones,’ he cackles, and behind his words that awful giggling laughter begins. As Casper backs away, he follows, matching her pace easily and circling. ‘I’ll snap ‘em open and suck the blood right out of ‘em. Grind ‘em up, paint the walls of my cell with it. Make a _necklace_ outta your _teeth_ ,’ he pants, eyes bright with a fervour she doesn’t like. It lends his words the permanence of a promise. A vow.

This time, when he lunges for her, he’s too fast to escape. He snatches her up and flings her clean across the room.

Any plans Casper had of meekly submitting to a vicious beating disappear with the crack of bone. Pain stabs through her and she coughs; warmth bubbles at the corner of her mouth and she turns, spits red onto the already red-stained floor of the food hall. In a moment’s glance, Casper sees everything she needs to know; the other prisoners have all abandoned the fight, pressing to the walls, and Dreg is gone. To collect the guards, Casper hopes.

‘Ow.’ Casper drags herself to her feet. A gentle press to her side tells her that one rib—maybe two—snapped when she slammed into the stone table and fell to the floor. ‘You know, I like my teeth. Maybe we can come to another agreement.’

Tovik sneers.

‘No? Pity. Well.’ She smiles at him, meeting his eyes squarely and, with every last scrap of prideful self-important ignorance she can must—and it is an awful lot—she says, ‘I promise to go easy on you.’

Tovik leaps toward her with a surprising agility for a man of his size.

Casper sidesteps him, kicks him into the wall behind her. He impacts with a dull thud and spins, blood trickling from his squashed nose. She’s pleased by that. Less pleased by the slow crawl of a grin across his face as he swipes the blood away and licks at the red stain across his wrist with a long, wet tongue.

Tovik runs at her, fists raised high like great warhammers. Casper dodges as best as she can and hits back whenever she can. It’s tired and dirty and beyond rough—his blows feel like hammers when they hit—and she tries not to enjoy it but there is something freeing about the way all her dark, turbulent worries fall away in the face of a far more immediate danger. And there’s a little voice in the back of her mind that laughs, silver-edged and eager, when she’s straddling that line between conscious and unconscious. Pain throbbing through her entire body, blood leaking from one ear—possibly connected to the high-pitched ringing in her ears she can’t shake away—and still that voice urges her to _fight_.

It ends ingloriously.

Casper ducks one punch and moves right into the path of another.

And then she’s down, flat on her back with one eye that won’t open and the other only showing her the fuzzy outline of a large figure. And then, too late to avoid it, crystal clear detail of a muddy foot slamming down toward her face and—

* * *

She’s still very much in pain when she comes to.

Something stiff and sturdy is braced beneath her and it rocks ever so slightly. Moving. Carrying her down a corridor that smells heavily of swamp. _Canvas_ , she thinks, sliding one finger the tiniest bit to the side to feel it. With one effort, Casper cracks one deeply swollen eyelid open but instead of the wooden doors that run down the hallway to the infirmary, she sees cells. Iron bars, familiar faces, and then a pallet of rotted boards and straw and the skeleton of a rat.

Her own cell.

 _Ah. Shit_.

‘—can put them back on right away, sir, I _promise_. But I can heal her.’

‘Might as well.’ _Guardsman Kroan_ , Casper identifies, familiar with his voice, the way it sounds like he’s chewing his words soft. ‘Better than using up the healer’s time and energy.’

‘Could be trying to escape, sir.’

‘Mm. Wouldn’t recommend it. You won’t try that, will ya, little lady?’ Kroan asks.

Casper doesn’t have to be more than scrapingly conscious to know that he thinks he’s being funny. She’ll be a halfling then, or a gnome. Not a goblin—he wouldn’t suffer a goblin to speak.

‘Oh no, sir. I can’t do much without my amulet anyway! I promise, I just want to help—she looks _awfully_ hurt.’ That is said gently, sadly, and Casper feels a touch on her wrist as light as a feather. Which is good, because that wrist is broken. ‘It’s my sacred oath to help and to heal, sir.’

‘…One minute. Then we put the manacles back on. Clear?’

‘Yessir. Crystal clear.’

‘Alright. One minute. Bartel. Take the cuffs off.’

Casper keeps her eyes closed. It’s easy to do; everything hurts and, now that her plan has failed, she’d rather like to be dead.

It’s not to be. Not yet, at any rate.

Two small hands brush her hair back from her temples and from there, a warmth begins to move through her. A warmth unlike fire, unlike desert heat, unlike body warmth; it is as clear and pure and complete as light itself, unaltered by the burning sun or the shadows that cling at the edges of all natural light. Casper’s eyes flash open and she grunts with surprise as the light works through her, burns out the start of infection, chases away mild aches and begins to knit together the fractures in her bones.

‘That’s all I can manage at the moment,’ the healer says, sounding drained and shaky, and Casper wonders—distantly, exhaustedly, her mind spinning round and round over her plans and burning them all to ash—if all that had been done in less than a minute or if the guards had been as surprised as she was by the raw display of power.

Kroan clears his throat. ‘Right. Right. Cuff her again.’

‘Y-yessir.’

Casper doesn’t stir as the guard affixes the manacles to her healer again. She waits until they’ve left, the sound of their boots faded, before she sits bolt upright and examines herself. Ugly gashes she’d earned in the fight with Tovik are healed over into glossy pink scars that scrape her knuckles and a few fingers ache but they’re no longer crooked where they’d been broken. Her rib still feels terribly sore but there is no give under the flat of her palm when she presses, first gently and then with more pressure.

‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t undo all my work, actually,’ a voice says from the behind her.

Casper freezes.

 _Stupid. Stupid, stupid_ , she chides herself. _How could you forget?_

Spinning in place up onto her knees—and biting down on a gasp of pain when the movement twinges her ribs—Casper takes in her new cellmate with narrowed eyes. Short, sweet-faced, dark-skinned and definitely a gnome. The newcomer has curling honey-dark hair pulled back into two buns and the displeased frown is giving way to a warm and welcoming smile that the woman doesn’t seem to be able to keep at bay for long. The manacles, Casper can see now, are glowing with a faint blue light that crackles over runes carved into the pins and brace of the cuffs. Though she has never seen them before, Casper has heard of them before and knows them to be magic-suppressors. She’d like to take a closer look— _Draconic runes, maybe? Or Celestial? Could be Elvish but they don’t tend to use those runes for permanent magics outside of the teleportation rings and the druidic-leaning ritual spells. I need to do more research—_ but there are more pressing matters to deal with.

‘Undo all _your_ work,’ Casper says, surprised by the rasp of her own voice. ‘You—that’s just—‘ She scrapes dirty fingers through her hair and shakes her head, laughs bitterly. ‘How ironic. But if it thanks you desire…thank you,’ she says, and the woman beams. A small part of Casper flinches as ice builds up on her tongue and scatters in freezing cold words. ‘For ruining _months_ of planning in a single minute. I think that might be a record.’

* * *

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ the healer says later that night, ‘but I really do think you could at least say thank you for healing you. I didn’t know about your plan—I still don’t—so I’m sorry that I apparently ruined it but I was only trying to help.’

Casper doesn’t so much as blink. While the other woman spent the last hour very obviously planning what she wanted to say, Casper spent the same hour pretending to sleep.

‘I know you’re awake.’

Casper stays still.

‘I’m…I’m pretty sure you’re awake. Are you awake?’

‘Everyone in this row is awake,’ Casper tells her wearily. ‘Sleep isn’t so easy to come by and you’re being very loud.’

‘Oh. Sorry. _Sorry_ ,’ she says again at half the volume.

‘It’s fine. We’re all criminals here. Harden criminals. Used to rough and sleepless nights.’ Casper opens her eyes just in time to see the healer’s expression fall a fraction; the woman shifts uneasily, turning her gaze from Casper to the bars and back again.

With a little bereft sigh at the loss of sleep—not that she was going to get any with a stranger in her cell—Casper levers herself up so she’s sitting with her back against the wall. She ignores the full-body ache that throbs through her system at the movement. While she may be healed of the worst injuries, the bruises remain.

She finds herself glad, not for the first time, that there is no mirror in her cell.

Now that she is no longer pretending to be asleep, Casper lets herself examine the woman properly. The flickering lowlight of the oil-burning lamps lends her dark skin a sallow mask, rings her anxious eyes with shadow. She’s curled in on herself on the straw bedding, she looks smaller than she had before, which is saying something. Casper feels a lurch of sympathy for her and sighs again.

‘I did say thank you.’

‘You did?’

‘I did. You may not have heard it,’ Casper allows. ‘It was buried rather deeply under _potent_ displeasure.’

‘That bit I definitely heard,’ the healer agrees with a nervous laugh.

Casper works to soften her expression. ‘Forgive me,’ she says, and feels her posture adjust to something of a more regal bearing. ‘You’ve done a good deed and you don’t deserve my ire—it was entirely my own fault that found me here, it’s not _you_ who is to blame that I remain. What can I call you, to thank you properly?’

The healer blinks at the sudden formality but the smile that cuts across her face like a bolt of blinding light is wide and warm. ‘Pike. Pike Trickfoot,’ she says, and stands to hold out a hand.

Ignoring the pain of fractured fingers, Casper takes it and folds the hand in her own. Pike’s fingers are calloused from work—either fighting or labour, Casper can’t quite tell—and stained in places with traces of dyes she assumes are medicinal in nature.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Pike Trickfoot,’ Casper says and bows as best as she can.

‘The pleasure is all mine…’ Pike trails off expectantly.

Casper purses her lips. Looks down at their joined hands. _An honest woman’s hands,_ Casper thinks, the thought striking her like a bolt of lightning out of blue skies. ‘Cassandra.’

‘Cassandra.’ Pike beams at her. ‘It is so very lovely to meet you.’

Cassandra’s eyebrows lift and she glances about them, away from Pike’s beaming sincerity; she looks to the old and faded words that stain the walls with what she suspects is both blood and Abyssal letters, the endless dark of the cell having twisted the mind of the prisoner who had held this place before her. She looks over the gloom of creeping shadows and heavy, nearly gelatinous slops of swamp mud that seep across the stone and drips from the ceiling. From the far end of the row comes a shrieking, wailing cry that pierces the dark and Cassandra looks back to Pike and arches her brows higher.

Pike flushes. ‘Yes, well, the situation…leaves a bit to be desired,’ she admits. ‘But you seem lovely.’


	2. Gaol Break

Ice. Panic. Darkness.

Then, something more than the dark.

Being here in this prison is like being submerged in dishwater; the dull light that creeps through these halls is more mist than anything else, the filthy kind that rolls off the rotting swamp, and the air is wet. It clings coolly to Cassandra, slicks her hair to her scalp, dampens her with cool sweat, makes it feel like she’s breathing in thin water and somehow isn’t drowned. There is so little light down here that everything is cast in a soft, smudged set of shifting greys that for an instant upon waking, Cassandra cannot be certain that she hasn’t opened her eyes into her own nightmare.

Between each cell is a sconce where a torch could be burning away. They sit empty. They have since Cassandra arrived here months ago.

A cold voice lances into her memory. _Prisoners don’t deserve light_ , he says, his _s’_ s sliding like scales across stone.

Cassandra shivers.

The bars of her cell cast lines of shadows like reaching fingers stretching over the ground, over her legs. Half-caught in her nightmare, Cassandra flinches—she draws her knees up to her chest to avoid that chilling touch. It sends an ache through her, her body protesting the movement. What is left of her body, at any rate. It seems, more than ever, she is nothing more than bruises stacked on bruises. If there are bones thrown in there somewhere, they are fractured. Even now, three days (more?) after her fight with Tovik, she’s mottled and sore, though the lack of sunlight and rations likely hasn’t helped in her recovery. Tovik had spared no effort in turning her into human mince.

Which, Cassandra reminds herself, had been the _point._ How very, very _clever_ of her.

What had been her m—the ambassador’s saying?

_All the cleverness in the world cannot command Fate_.

Cassandra lets out a long breath. Relaxes.

Her plan hadn’t…well, it hadn’t gone to plan, but that didn’t mean that it was an entire failure. She listens to the prison waking around her. To the clanking and rattling of chains. To the whispers that never really stop, rising and falling and twisting, burrowing into her mind, tickling at the base of her neck and making her _twitch_ , conjuring the taste of copper into her mouth and a twitch into fingers searching for a weapon, anything will do, a blade, a shard of bone—she has to shake her head hard to dismiss the whispers, force herself sternly to ignore them. There is a wet _thump, thump, thump_ from a cell down the row she tries not to identify. The taste of copper grows stronger. Pushan begins to wail at the far end of the row, his horrible, gurgling shriek that makes it sound as though he’s always on the brink of death. She listens and smiles; notably absent for the third morning in a row is Tovik. His threats, his screams, the pulling and tugging on his chains. It makes her own punishment almost worth it; seclusion and reduced rations in return for Tovik being placed in a different sector.

‘That’s awful,’ a quiet voice says.

Cassandra tenses. It takes her a moment to remember. Yes, the voice is coming from her own cell, but it comes from the woman seated in its corner, not from some place in Cassandra’s mind.

Pike.

‘You get used to it, I’m afraid.’

‘Which part?’

‘All of it.’

She sits up slowly. Looks over to her cell mate.

At some point during the night, Pike must have fashioned a sort of broom from scraps of moulded straw because she has swept a section of the floor mostly clear of muck. From a glance, Cassandra can see she has also attempted to clean the walls; the blood-scrawled message is only the tiniest bit faded, but an attempt has been made. Pike herself is seated off centre in the cell, her hands folded on her sternum. Eyes closes, head tilted to the left and up slightly toward the ceiling, she looks…serene. Despite the manacles around her wrists, despite her general situation. Calm. And Cassandra swears that a strained nimbus of pure light surrounds her form.

Pike doesn’t open her eyes but she smiles very slightly. ‘Have you?’

Cassandra blinks. ‘Pardon? Have I…?’

‘Gotten used to it?’

‘Ah.’ Cassandra’s eyes slip sideways, to the incredibly faint flicker of energy that holds in front of the bars, to the blood beginning to seep from underneath the door of the cell down the row from her. The thumping has stopped, she realises. Shudders. Shifts her attention firmly away from that, back to Pike. ‘No. Not yet. I am of the belief that if I did, I might never try to leave. And that is…unacceptable.’

Pike nods. Slowly, letting out a sigh, the woman unfolds her hands and relaxes. Her serene smiles fades slightly as Purshan begins his wretched wail once more. ‘Does this really happen every morning?’ She shivers, shakes her head.

‘He’s a creature of habit. I hope you didn’t come here planning on sleeping in,’ Cassandra jokes.

‘Of course I did. It’s a holiday lodge.’

‘The steam baths are frozen over, I’m afraid.’

‘The food isn’t _quite_ of the quality I was promised,’ Pike adds, grinning.

‘I’m sure the guards would be very receptive to a comment card,’ Cassandra tells her solemnly. ‘Gentle feedback. _One does not appreciate being awoken at the small hours.’_

_‘_ Oh I don’t mind that so much,’ Pike disagrees. ‘It’s like my grandfather—great-great-grandfather _,_ actually, I think—always says: Early to rise, early to finish our work and have a cup of tea.’

Cassandra blinks. ‘Does he really say that?’

‘Every day.’

‘Fascinating. The version I learned was _Early to rise, quick to fall_.’

That startles a laugh out of Pike. The sound is dampened by their cell—either by the stone or by general malaise, Cassandra can’t decide—and fades away too soon.

‘Different upbringings,’ Pike says with a grin. She stands, stretches as best she can when she’s only able to move her hands a short distance apart.

‘It was a favourite where I’m from. A joke, in a way,’ Cassandra admits. She stands too, using the wall to prop herself up. ‘Some clever prick came up with it. Backwards—‘ She pauses to press a hand to her ribs, breath catching. They’re making themselves felt in retribution for her standing, or perhaps their envy of Pike’s uninjured state. Affecting a thoughtful expression, Cassandra continues, ‘Backwards, it’s… _llafot kci uqes irot, ylrae_. Or, _Belonging to the one left standing, victory_. Loosely. Elvish, I think, though I’m certain I garbled the pronunciation. Do you speak it?’

Pike shakes her head no.

‘Then forget that—I said it perfectly,’ Cassandra announces, and she allows herself a slight smile when Pike laughs again.

* * *

On the fourth day—what Cassandra is pretty sure is the fourth day—Pike has taken to pacing. Pacing and touching her hands to her sternum again and again. Each time she does—and feels the manacles, or feels the empty space where something else ought to sit—her smile droops further and the healer paces for longer. It isn’t a large cell, and it is made smaller by holding two people in it, even a starved human and a small gnome. Still, short legs means it takes her eight steps to walk from the doors to the back corner of the cell. The sound entrenches itself in Cassandra’s mind.

_Step step step slop._ There is a small bowl-like hollow there that is filled with thick, foul-smelling water. The pitiful evidence of a previous escape attempt, perhaps.

_Step step step step-turn._

Pike stops. Starts again.

_Step step step step slop._ Shakes her foot.

Cassandra flicks her eyes over to Pike from her place at the bars, leaning against them to see who steps out from the guard post down the east end. Pike doesn’t truly seem to notice what she’s stepped in, which is probably for the best. Instead, she fiddles at the ties of her shirt and worries at her bottom lip and mutters under her breath.

_Step step step-turn. Step_.

After some time of this, Pike finally makes her way to the door where Cassandra is sitting and stops. Having learned her lesson very well, she doesn’t wrap her hands around the bars but leans against them instead, as Cassandra is doing. She looks down at her hands, at the blisters there and a slight red scrape and begins to talk.

Cassandra listens to her gentle chatter with both ears and half of her attention.

‘– met your friend Dreg and she was very nice, showed me around the pavilion. It’s a real sense of accomplishment,’ she says sarcastically, ‘to get to add to a building like this. Honestly, I wish that the decorations would be a little prettier, it would make building our own prison a little less, um…entirely terrible?’

Cassandra blows a harsh breath out of her nose. Once, as a more dignified girl, people would have hesitated to call it a snort. Now, however, as a lowlife and a criminal and absolutely caked with grime, sitting in the bottom of a prison, the noise she makes is most certainly a snort.

‘You’ve seen it haven’t you? All straight lines and grey stone. The only decorations are those really scary looking gargoyles on the towers.’

‘Technically,’ Cassandra points out absent-mindedly, watching a cloaked figure disappear into the guard post, ‘they aren’t gargoyles. They’re _grotesques_. The difference being that gargoyles have an additional feature in being water spouts and grotesques are merely carved statues.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

Cassandra shrugs a shoulder. ‘No reason why you would. It’s useless information, really,’ she tells Pike very quietly, smiling softly. ‘Go on, though.’

Pike worries at her lip some more. ‘Are you sure this isn’t _mean_? Telling you about my day when you’re not allowed to leave?’

‘On the contrary. I’m living vicariously through you.’

Her face twists with worry but she nods. ‘Okay, okay. Let’s see…I sat with Dreg at the break. She showed me where you two hid the hardtack. Very clever. Then I worked on the extension for a while with these two dwarfs and they were a bit rude about my size which,’ Pike blows out a disgruntled breath. ‘They’re _barely_ taller than me so that’s just rude.’

‘Very.’

‘I showed them. You can’t grow up with someone like Grog and not know how to throw a punch. Or lift heavy stuff. I can’t tell you how many times he knocked over the bookcase,’ Pike laughs, shaking her head. ‘And one time a whole _tree._ ’

Cassandra blinks. ‘A tree?’

‘A big oak by the back door. We got it standing again though! And with a little,’ Pike wriggles her fingers, ‘it started growing again. I think that might’ve been luck though – I’m not a _druid_ ,’ she laughs, and snorts, and laughs again. ‘The neighbours fence was crushed though,’ she admits with a guilty kind of grin. ‘Anyway, I met a really nice guy called Cherrik and he showed me how to build chairs badly. Passive resistance, he called it. Do what the guards ask you to do but badly. He’s _way_ better at it than I am, though. All his chairs are wobbly.’

Nodding slowly, Cassandra says, ‘He’s conniving, that one. Also, a ghoul.’

‘A what?’

‘A ghoul.’ She leans harder against the bars, trying to see who the owner of the cloak is. She has a feeling she knows but if she could just see his face… ‘He’s big on technicalities like that. Argued his way out of death, apparently. That’s the rumour anyway. Or traded something for immortality, but it means he has to eat people now? I don’t know.’ She shrugs again. ‘Either way, he also tried to argue that he technically didn’t do anything wrong by eating four people since he hadn’t personally killed them.

‘Oh.’

‘I heard they’re trying to decide if killing him would be murder and it’s taking a long time. Either way, the Lawkeeper didn’t want a not-quite cannibal on the streets. Or a not-quite alive or dead person either. So he’s here now, causing minor trouble for the guards.’

In her peripheries, Cassandra sees Pike frown. ‘Cassandra.’

‘Mhm.’

‘I don’t want to be rude, but,’

‘You want to know why I’m here.’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘I’m not a ghoul. Not in the literal sense, at least.’ At a glance, she can tell that Pike doesn’t seem appeased by the answer. Cassandra shrugs. ‘Wrong place, wrong time, wrong pocket. I was stealing from someone I shouldn’t have stolen from.’

‘You shouldn’t steal from anyone.’

‘Technically, you’re correct. But in actuality, I’ve found that you can steal from as many poor people as you like and people usually don’t care. But rich folk? They care. Very much. And they have more money and usually notice less when you steal it. Tricky balance,’ Cassandra muses. ‘The trick is in finding someone in the middle. Rich enough not to notice when a coin or two goes missing, but poor enough that no one important cares. The other trick,’ she tells Pike a little ruefully, ‘is being good at picking pockets.’

‘Which you aren’t.’

‘I am not.’

Pike grimaces. ‘I see.’

‘I also picked the wrong person. Someone…dangerous,’ Cassandra admits. The cloak flutters at the end of the row of cells again. Cassandra begins to stand, wiping as much grime from her hands as she can. ‘And he’s coming down the hall right now so I think it’d be best if you stepped back, to the back of the cell if you would? And—and a word of advice, Pike - no matter what he offers you, turn him down.’

‘What? What do you mean?‘

Cassandra shakes her head. Holds up a finger.

_Wait_ , she mouths.

Footfalls on stone. The slow double _tap-click_ , _tap-click_ of leather and wood as the man steps, swings his staff forward, steps again. It isn’t long before murmuring and crying and the insistent stream of innocence falls silent down the way. A murmur of conversation. The occasional scrape of metal on metal as a door is unlocked and opened. The far more frequent crack of wood on flesh and bone.

Cassandra doesn’t look at Pike when Zhaladrine finally steps by their cell, though she can feel the other woman’s eyes on her, burning a spot between Cassandra’s shoulder blades.

Draped over the man’s shoulders are robes woven from a white fabric. The robes fall in thick, soft folds. Threads of true gold and silver are stitched into it as a smattering of glittering stars within the expanse of white. The robes are held out of the muck, the end draped over one arm, but his soft boots are smeared with the traces of the swamp, as are the cuffs of his blue breeches. _Clothes maketh the man_ , Cassandra thinks and she remembers helping boys into dresses and girls into coats and near swimming in a Keeper’s robe herself and she looks into the opal-cut eyes of the man and sees children playing make-believe. Sees a charlatan playing in the sumptuous robes of a religious man, the very picture of divine benevolence. Tall and slender, Zhaladrine is a bronzed half-elven man with hair of deep copper lined with silver. Wrinkles crease the soft skin around his eyes and mouth. Despite the wrinkles showing his age, his eyes are bright and sharp. They seem to catch and reflect the soft lights that float around his shoulders, hovering in front of the cage as though the lights themselves were sentient and intent on examining Cassandra.

At his approach, she becomes aware that she’s leaning heavily against the bars and she shifts to stand upright as though she is in no pain at all. Meets his eyes directly, steadily.

The lights sting at her eyes but never for long, flitting about him as they are. It is an effective tool— _the brilliance of the Dawnfather is harsh, my child. This is but a fraction of how it shall feel to be reborn in His light_ —but from a personal viewpoint as someone who hasn’t seen the light of day for a week…it’s the worst.

‘Dawn’s light be upon you, child,’ Zhaladrine intones, setting the words before her like an offering.

‘Zhaladrine.’

‘I have come once more to offer you salvation. To offer you joy and peace and the sublime light of the Dawnfather.’

‘For me? You shouldn’t have,’ Cassandra drawls.

He ignores her derision. ‘I have a soft spot for those poor souls others see as unworthy,’ Zhaladrine says quietly, ever so gently. ‘Those overlooked, those seemingly firmly entrenched in the darkness. I believe they only require patience.’ A faint light shines above his head—a crown, a corona of dull, golden light. The guards on either side of him are bathed in the same light, their eyes growing wide as the golden light bathes their armour. His voice does not grow louder but it does grow more intense, resonates slightly with gut-wrenching sincerity. ‘I can be your path from this place. A path to _salvation_.’

‘Is that in a single package? Twenty gold per month? Does that include delivery or is that extra? How much does it cost to get the sublime light special delivered from beyond the Divine Gate? Is there a tax for something that passes the Gate? Customs?’

He ignores her mocking questions. Black eyes shift over her colourful bruises and he sighs mournfully, lips downturned at the corners; the force of his pity slams into Cassandra like a slap to the face. ‘How much more pain are you willing to endure? How much longer will you cling to this…sunken _wreck_ that is your life? Does your pride stand _so firmly_ in the way that you refuse to recognise it for what it is? There is nowhere else to go, my child – nowhere but out. Into the light.’

‘I have a few more weeks left in me, I think.’

‘The Dawnfather illuminates the darkness in one’s soul. I understand that you are frightened but you must know that he can guide you on the path toward faith, toward _good_. It is not a painless journey – I shall not lie to you in that regard – but do you not wish to join him in – ‘

‘If Pelor wants me so badly,’ Cassandra cuts him off, pressing so close to the bars and to the barrier there that her breath stings at it, causes sparks to flare and flutter across the shield, ‘he can come and talk to me his own damned self.’

‘His Brilliance travels with each of his Faithful. You presume much to speak so to one of your betters. Each word spoken to me is as though spoken to the Dawnfather himself, for wherever I walk, his light, the light of the Dawn is upon me and the ranks,’

‘Of the Faithful who are obedient unto him and the laws he has passed to the mortal realm. His legion of star-burnt warriors that serve and protect as he directs them, his followers who till and harvest and hunt as they require and never more as is his law to protect the world and one another and nature itself and all those who require aid, to answer the call with his name upon their lips and the fire of glorious battle within them. I know the words too,’ Cassandra tells him. The longer her gaze fixes on him, the brighter the light seems to grow. ‘I know the names and the prayers…and I know how to recognise one of the Faithful, _Keeper_. Tell me,’ she says, lowering her voice to an unfriendly, snaking murmur, ‘What do you do with them? Do you sell them on this idea of redemption? Of salvation? Tell them a life in servitude is what he wants for them? Sell them into slavery with a smile? How much do you get for each one?’

Zhaladrine’s smile grows brittle, thin lips pressed tight together to the point where it looks if he tries to smile they’ll shatter clear off his face. ‘A pity. I had so hoped you would reconsider.’ The light about his head flickers and goes out. Without that light, the darkness of the prison is more pronounced than ever and the lines in his face grow dark and deep with shadows. His opal eyes glint with a flicker of sourceless light. ‘Be careful of the people you offend, child,’ he warns. ‘Some of us don’t take so kindly to it.’

For an instant, it is as though his voice is doubled and a fog creeps through Cassandra’s mind. She shakes her head once, twice, but it doesn’t shift and when she looks up, her breath catches in her throat. It’s impossible—absolutely _impossible—_ but the hall and opposite cell before her, the guards and Zhaladrine… They’re all gone. And replacing them is a dining hall laden with fine foods and a crackling warm fire.

She knows this place.

She knows it very well.

Sudden fear grips her. A small voice in the back of her mind, her own voice, tells her she knows what this is, knows what is happening, but all the rest of her is caught up in it and horrified and she can’t break free of it.

Cassandra looks down at her hands; they’re smaller than she knows them to be now, and pale and clean and free, mostly, of scars. They tremble a little as she smooths down the front of a fine blue dress, made heavy to combat the winter chill but still nice, with pretty silver lacing at the cuffs of her wrists. Cassandra’s stomach grips tight like a fist and punches up into her chest, her heart seeming to stop for one sickening moment. She staggers back, reaches blindly for the cell walls, but if she hits them she can’t tell because the vision surrounds her entirely. It shifts, turning her. She fights it—how she _fights_ , with _everything_ in her she tries to stop, to turn away, to _run—_ but she can do nothing except watch, carried along in this younger body, this younger self so blissfully, horribly unaware of what is to come. Cassandra watches, her eyes wide and streaming with tears, as two handsome, laughing boys sweep her up and bring her to the table. They sit on either side of her, talking to and around and over her, their words unintelligible but kind and excited and _happy_ and it _hurts_. They pour her wine. The man at the far end of the table pretends not to see it. The woman seated at his side chides the boys, who laugh and dilute it with a heavy splash of water. Cassandra feels her attention finally move to settle on the two strangers, remembers how her shyness had stopped her from looking that night until now, until someone had said her name and asked some interesting question, and she looks up at the two strangers, the two beautiful strangers, and the lady turns a sweet smile on her and Cassandra knows this isn’t how it was then but now she sees the lady’s eyes are two deep pits of black and the coy red of her smile splits in two and blood pours from her mouth and covers her front, her hands, her plate, the table, sweeps over the entire room and everyone sits and smiles and laughs and Cassandra cannot stand and she is drowning in red, red, red–

‘Cassandra!’

The spell ends.

She is laying on her back, two fresh spots of pain blooming on her chest from where she assumes the guards had jabbed her with the butts of their spears. Her knuckles sting on her left hand where a red scrape crosses them. Her throat is raw and stings when she swallows.

Pike is kneeling at her side, eyes wide with horror.

‘My apologies,’ Cassandra croaks, voice cracked and rough as though she has been screaming.

‘Don’t—don’t apologise. He – I saw it. He cast something on you.’ Pike’s eyebrows crinkle into the softest look of concern. ‘A fear spell? Does that sound right?’

Cassandra pulls her eyes from Pike, stares up at the blank ceiling. Her entire body burns from the effort of fear, holding herself tense and still and likely shaking against the back wall, and its oddly soothing to just…lay there in the muck.

‘Yes. That sounds about right.’

‘That’s so fucked up,’ Pike breathes. ‘All that talk of the Dawnfather and he goes and does that?’

Cassandra tries to smile. It takes more effort than she’s expecting so she lets it fall to the side. ‘He’s not really a cleric. Not like you are. Not at all, maybe.’ She sucks in a breath. Tries to calm her racing heart. ‘He has tricks. People who can’t – can’t tell the difference think he is, but…’

‘He’s an asshole.’

The bald comment makes Cassandra smile. A twitch of a smile. ‘Precisely.’ She breathes in again. It’s a little worrying that she has to focus to do it but she hopes that will ease soon. ‘His _redemption_ ,’ she says, lips twisting into a sneer, ‘comes at a steep cost. Don’t talk to him. Try – try to stay out of sight,’ she warns. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you out there.’

‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.’ Pike looks a little wrecked, her hand going for her neck again and clutching around something that isn’t there. The spark of light in her eyes flashes and then disappears, fizzles out. Her shoulders slump. Unable to cast anything, she settles next to Cassandra’s head and strokes her hair gently. ‘It’s okay. My friends are coming for me.’

Exhausted, Cassandra hums. ‘Friends?’

‘People who like me who aren’t family,’ Pike says. Then, teasingly, ‘You’ve had friends before, haven’t you?’

Cassandra just smiles. ‘And you think they’re coming for you?’

‘As soon as they can.’

There is something in the words—in her tone—that is so warm, and solid, and confident that Cassandra’s eyes flutter open and she stares up at the woman’s round face, at the totally easy expression of someone with unshakeable faith. Strong enough that Cassandra allows herself to believe that it might be true.

* * *

As another night comes and goes, her faith turns simply to hope. She would hate for this sweet woman to be disappointed. As Cassandra’s next plan begins to grow in her mind, as options and opportunities and possibilities splinter into myriad plans, she finds that in each iteration of her escape, there is a little honey-haired gnome at her side.

//

When the next day comes and falls away and still Pike holds onto her faith, Cassandra says nothing but Pike still seems to know.

‘You think I’m crazy.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You’re staring,’ Pike says with a grin.

‘You have a smudge. On your face,’ Cassandra lies. Sighs when Pike just looks at her expectantly. It never would have occurred to her a week ago but having a talkative cell make is almost worse than being completely alone. _Liar_ , a sweet voice says in the back of her mind. It is her own voice but an old one. Almost unrecognisable. ‘In my experience,’ she says when Pike starts batting her eyelashes and doesn’t stop, even when they both start grinning, ‘stop that.’

‘Thank Sarenrae, that was starting to hurt.’

‘In my experience, when you’re in a sticky situation, it’s up to you to get yourself out of it.’

Pike considers that for a while. Then, softly, she says, ‘That’s very sad, Cass,’ and pats her gently on the shoulder, and she says no more about it, waiting until the last guard rotation of the night has gone past before she hands Cassandra the bread she squirreled away from the dinner table.

* * *

Two knocks wake Cassandra from her sleep that night. She comes awake with a puff of cold breath and keeps very still, blinking into the darkness.

Curled into a little ball on the opposite side of the cell is Pike and she yawns, sighs, turns over. ‘Go ‘way, Grog. ‘m sleeping.’

It’s not the first time Pike has said Grog’s name in her sleep but it is the first time that there has been a knock on their cell door, and the first time that Cassandra has stared out at a frankly _enormous_ body outside their door. One that pokes at the barrier and says a low ‘ _ouch_ ’ each time it stings his finger.

Cassandra blinks. Squints into the dark, certain she must be imagining this.

‘But _Pike_ ,’ a deep voice says—a voice like rocks grinding, like the rumble in a stone floor as the precursor to an earthquake. ‘Don’t you wanna get outta there?’

There’s another moment and then the words seem to sink into Pike’s mind because she jolts. Sits upright with an almighty yawn. ‘Oh yeah. Okay Grog, I’m awake,’ she says, and laughs a little, and Cassandra hears her step over to the bars. ‘I missed you!’

‘I missed you too! So _much!_ It’s been _terrible_ , Pike, none of them are fun like you are an’ – ‘

A third voice speaks then, exasperated. Thin and sharp and bright like crisp frozen leaves underfoot or the glint off the sharp edge of a blade. ‘This is very sweet but I need you to move aside so I can get to the lock, alright?’ The sounds of a minor tussle follow—a few grunts, the shift of booted foot on stone, a yelp—and then silence.

Cassandra strains her ears; she manages to pick out from between the whine of wind through some distant passage and the _plunk_ of heavy water the _click_ and _click_ and _scrape_ of metal in the lock. Then,

‘Ah _shit_. It’s magicked. Pike, can you…’

‘I’ve got these on.’ Metal jangles as Pike shows off the manacles, faintly illuminated by the constant hum and glow of the runes. ‘Sorry, Vax.’

‘No, no, that’s alright Pickle. I can figure this out.’

‘It’s a barrier enchantment,’ Cassandra says softly.

For an instant, it’s as though she’s been thrust into a vacuum—no sound, no breath, no light—and then all three of them are hissing at one another.

‘Who is that?’

‘Did they hurt you, Pikey?’

‘No, no, she –’

‘If they did, I’ll kill ‘em,’

‘That’s not _really_ the best thing to say while I’m in a _cell_ with her, Grog.’

‘…Right. I can see that. Sure.’

‘She’s really nice, I promise,’

‘Is she coming?’

‘Can’t slam the bloody door on her, Vax, that seems like a real dick move.’

‘You’ve been hanging out with Vex too much.’

‘There’s never too much hanging out with Vex,’ Pike and Grog tell the one called Vax sternly.

Then,

‘We didn’t know anything about another person,’ Vax continues. ‘Our plan,’

‘Our plans always turn to shit anyway. And I ruined her escape plan, I owe her. Please let her out with us?’

‘… Fine.’ A shadow sneaks along the bars, over to Cassandra’s side. She can make out – very faintly – a slender face with pointed ears. Light bounces off his eyes but the dark cloak obscures the rest of his shape. ‘What can you tell me about the barrier?’

‘The keys the guards have seem to work fine,’ she tells him. He grunts. Cassandra thinks on it for a moment. ‘I suspect the barrier only stops living things moving through.’

‘Huh. Can you pick a lock?’

‘No better time to find out,’ she says, watches the dark cloak shift slightly as he digs into a pocket.

‘Alright…here goes.’

Vax tosses a small pack toward the bars and she holds her breath, waiting for the spark of energy. It doesn’t come; instead, the pack sails smoothly through the gap and lands squarely in Cassandra’s hands. Three relieved sighs burst from the group; the big one— _Grog_ , Cassandra thinks—didn’t seem to be concerned.

‘Right, I’ll talk you through it.’

‘Thank you,’ Cassandra says very politely, and she kneels down in front of the lock and gets to work, relying mostly on hearing and sensation since Pike’s manacles only give of the faintest light. Even in the dark, even with her heartbeat thundering in her ears, she hears the first pin _click_ and files the success away for appropriate celebration later. Even in the dark, she catches the crescent sliver of a smile from the opposite side of the door. ‘I’ve been breaking into my brother’s rooms since I was five,’ she admits. ‘I’m passingly familiar with the tools.’

‘Good for us.’

It takes a while. Cassandra moves as quickly as she can. Nerves churn in her belly but she doesn’t let it touch her hands, keeping them steady and gentle. Whatever force had broken or melted his other set of picks from the other side doesn’t seem to be in effect from this side— _an oversight_ , Cassandra chides and thanks the guards in her mind—and finally the lock gives another _click_ and she starts to move onto another pin only to find that there isn’t another. It’s done.

She pulls the tools away and, breath caught in her throat, pushes on the door.

Rusty hinges creak heinously loud, even to her hearing.

Before she can stand, an enormous hand reaches in over her head and grabs Pike, lifts her clean out of the cell.

‘ _Pike!_ ’

‘ _Grog!_ You’re so quiet, Grog!’

‘Vex gave me her boots,’ the man says, apparently as quiet as he is able to sound but still with a voice like a miniature avalanche. ‘They’re real soft. And…small,’ he adds, shifting in place, enormous feet moving in a way that tells Cassandra they’re pinching his toes _bad_.

‘Yes, yes, what a beautiful moment, let’s _go_. Pike, we’ve got your stuff—sorry new kid, we don’t have yours.’

Cassandra steps out into the hall. Her hands shake. She forces them down by her sides. ‘I have to get someone else out.’

The cloaked man throws his head back, pinches at the bridge of his nose. When the hood falls back, she can make out a hint of pointed ears. Dark eyes and tanned skin, black serviceable leather. A faint scar above his eyebrow. All in all—considering in addition the _two_ sets of lockpicks he had on his person—he isn’t the most reputable looking fellow.

‘You’re _joking_.’

Cassandra straightens her spine. Forces herself not to shake. ‘No.’

‘We don’t have time – ‘

‘I can do it myself,’ she hisses, keeping her voice low.

‘ _Vax_.’

The man glances down at Pike. Back at Cassandra. Nods. ‘Fine. _Fine_. But we have to go now. Come with us.’

He pulls his hood back over his head and starts off.

Cassandra follows the trio down the hall to the end where it splits. Vax catches her elbow; with impressive reflexes, he pulls away an instant before her elbow connects with his ribs. Before she can apologise—if she intended to, and she’s not sure she would have—he kneels and pulls a wicked looking dagger from his boot. Presses it into her hand. In the dust, he draws a few lines quickly, jabs a little dot into the dirt.

‘This is us,’ he tells her, voice low and urgent. ‘The guards room is here.’ He points to a spot on the map and then down the hall to their left so she can orient herself. Sketching further, he continues, ‘Beyond here is the item lock up. Should still be unlocked. It’s neat but there’s a lot of stuff in there. Better know what you’re looking for if you’re going in. And here,’ he mutters, drawing several corridors and ending with a neat square, ‘this is where we came in. Door behind a bookcase. Opens when you yank a fancy purple book. Comes out into a courtyard. There’s also a guard that comes by every fifteen minutes or so, so you’ll wanna get out between the turns. Got it?’

‘Got it.’

‘Good luck,’ he says, clasps her wrist with a brisk hold, and leads the others away and down the right-hand hall without looking back.

Cassandra turns away from them instantly and heads left, toward the lock up.

It is in fact still “unlocked”; the door is hanging to the side, wood splintered and the hinges physically snapped. She eases her way past the door, wincing when it creaks faintly, and she pauses and holds very still for half a minute. Finally, she chides herself. Every tiny sound isn’t going to give her away but if she keeps wasting time on it, there’s more and more chance that someone _will_ find her.

She moves deeper into the room.

It doesn’t take long to find that the room is chronologically organised, and only a little longer to find her own pack and weapons. Shrugs into a shirt and breeches she’s certain used to fit much better. She spends a minute searching for boots but gives up. They were good boots; they wouldn’t have let them go to waste. Making short work of the locks on the weapon cabinets, Cassandra takes her longsword and scabbard, throwing the heavy leather bandolier over her shoulder and hurrying to buckle it. The loaned knife she tucks into her belt.

Looking about the room, there’s no way of knowing what belongs to whom—no names, no apparent file numbers, nothing. Cassandra shrugs.

_Already breaking out of prison—why not add a little theft to the list of charges?_

She gathers up a few scattered items—anything that looks as though it might be useful—and pulls a stout shortsword from the cabinet in the absence of any other serviceable weapons.

The likelihood of discovery grows the longer she spends in one place, so Cassandra makes to slip out of the room. A burst of inspiration sends her to the next room—empty, thankfully—and she searches the walls and desk at the guard post for any keys. Several rings of apparently identical keys hang from a hook on the wall and Cassandra allows a sharp smile to slash across her lips.

Armed, pack recovered, _free,_ Cassandra returns to the hallway. She stares down the way Pike had gone and with a wistful look, she turns away from the exit and heads deeper into the prison, despite every instinct telling her to run. Run hard and run far.

_East four. Five. Six._ Cassandra turns down the hall and creeps through the slick mud. Feeling a vibration in her belt—the dagger, shivering in place with some kind of eagerness—Cassandra ducks into a shadowed nook just in time to avoid a guard that passes her by, not seeming to see her. The dagger continues to hum and shiver as she hurries on, warning her of the people around. Rats. Prisoners. The occasional guard moving to their next post.

Heart in her throat, near dizzy with fear, it feels like forever before she reaches Dreg’s cell.

_East nine-four_.

Cassandra clicks her tongue. Flinches at the dry _snick_ it makes. It’s hardly noticeable, she _knows_ that, but in the heavy silence it’s too loud for comfort.

‘Dreg,’ she says, pitching her voice so only her friend can hear. ‘Dreg.’

‘Cass?’

‘It’s time. Get up.’

Fumbling with the keys, Cassandra tries two of them—heart racing when metal scrapes, lock shuddering when the keys stick, unmoving—and finally the third turns in the lock. She eases the door open. Hands Dreg the items she’d pinched.

‘I know it’s probably not yours but I grabbed what I could.’

Dreg takes the sword. Weighs it in her hand. Nods. ‘It’s good. Let’s go.’

Cassandra nods; she starts to lead the way out of the cell block and seizes, heart clenching painfully, when she spots two gleaming orange-yellow eyes in the corner of the cell, gleaming like twin moons. A mouthful of jagged teeth splits in a smile. The goblin nods.

‘Oi. Cass, what,’

‘Hold on,’ Cassandra tells Dreg. She moves to the bars. ‘If I give you these keys, can you start a little mayhem?’

The goblin unfolds itself. Small and sharp, with two slits for nostrils and bony protrusions dotting the skull beneath green skin like some menacing buried crown, the goblin is a wicked little thing. Lithe and strong and _quick_ , its nails clack on the stone as it makes its way skittering to the bars.

‘I can do that,’ the goblin croaks. ‘Congratulations on your escape.’

‘Thank you,’ Cassandra says politely, heart thundering. ‘Good luck to you.’

‘ _Cassandra_.’

‘I won’t be leaving,’ the goblin shrugs. ‘But mischief? Mischief I can do.’ Long, four-jointed fingers hook around the ring of keys Cassandra pokes through the bars. ‘Trickster’s favour on you, shade-touched.’

* * *

‘If you hadn’t wasted time on that fucking goblin, we wouldn’t be in this mess,’ Dreg pants, sprinting down the hall as quietly as she is able.

Cassandra feels sweat slink down her spine from where it gathers around her hairline; she wishes she could wipe it away, away from her eyes where it is starting to sting, but there isn’t any time. She can hear yelling and pounding feet on stone and there isn’t any fucking _time_ , they’re going to be trapped, they’re going to be _killed_ here.

_No_.

She grabs Dreg’s arm, yanks her sideways—hopes, desperately, that this is the right room.

‘This is a dead end.’

‘Look for a book! Purple,’

‘I’m colour blind!’

‘Fuck! It’s fancy. Just yank them all out until – aha!’ Cassandra’s hand falls wildly on one of the tomes—purple, silver script on the spine—and yanks. The entire bookcase shudders and creaks and tips the fuck over, very loudly, wood partially cracked from what looks like two great handholds where a goliath had grabbed it. To open or close it, Cassandra isn’t sure.

‘Subtle,’ Dreg grunts. Her eyes are huge and dull violet irises are nearly eaten entirely by black pupils; they dart every which way, examining the passage ahead of them. A second passes—not nearly enough time to be certain—and she sucks in a breath. ‘Fuck it,’ she mutters, and charges ahead, sword out.

Cassandra follows.

The passage runs straight for a good fifty feet before rising sharply in a set of stairs. A small wooden door opens, unlocked, unbarred. They empty out into a quiet courtyard and stop, startled.

Cassandra drags in a shuddering breath. The air still tastes fetid and almost sweet in a disgusting way, like a rotting swamp does, but there is a faint cool breeze that brushes against her skin and after a week underground—after _months_ locked in the prison—this, just this, is _everything_.

Cool grass underfoot, slick from recent rain. The moon heavy and full in the sky, curtained by grey clouds that drag apart with the slow anticipation of a stunning second act. Silver light coats the high, harsh walls of the Grey Hold and under the moonlight, it looks almost regal.

‘We’re out,’ Dreg breathes, and when Cassandra turns to her, the half-orc has her head turned upwards to the moon and her eyes are suspiciously glossy. ‘We’re out.’

‘Not quite yet,’ Cassandra warns.

Almost immediately—because that’s how their luck is working out at the moment—there is a quiet ‘Huh?’ as an armoured guard turns the corner.

‘What the fu–’ the guard manages to say before Dreg palms her helmeted head in one hand and _slams_ her back against the stone wall.

‘ _Run_ ,’ she growls over her shoulder to Cassandra. Blinks with surprise when Cassandra reaches around and grabs the guards sword. Pulling the helmet away, she slams the hilt of the blade stunningly hard against the guards’ temple.

The guard crumples, held aloft only by the pressure of Dreg’s hold. When the half-orc lets her go, the woman slithers boneless to the grass.

‘Oh.’

‘I’m a little more capable with a weapon in my hands,’ Cassandra tells her.

Dreg grunts. ‘Only a little. You were plenty capable before – just _sneaky_ ‘bout it.’

Cassandra grins, a little wild. ‘Thank you.’ She watches Dreg’s ears twitch. ‘More guards?’

‘More. Way more.’

‘Time to run, then?’

‘Yeah. That way.’

They sprint for the westward extension, both of them familiar with the slightly lower wall and the rough stone not yet smoothed. Plenty of good handholds. The sound of guards grows louder and louder, but off to the side and Cassandra risks a glance back of her shoulder.

She swears.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Keep – running,’ Cassandra pants, and she veers to the side, heading toward the trio sprinting across the edge of the open court. ‘ _Pike_ ,’ she hisses, not wanting to draw attention to Dreg or herself, or the trio who look to nearly have escaped notice. ‘ _Pik – Vax_ ,’ she hisses, and the half-elf snaps his attention in her direction, eyes flashing wide. When she beckons, he nods, waits for a half second and then tosses Pike in her direction.

Pike rolls her eyes mid-throw at the manhandling. She lands with a little stumble but continues to run, worried expression easing when she spies Cassandra.

‘Hi!’

‘Yes, hello,’ Cassandra gasps. ‘West wall.’

‘West wall?’ a too-loud voice repeats, and the goliath is suddenly _there_. His enormous strides eat up the distance between them and he dips, picks Pike up into the crook of his arm, and sprints toward the outer wall. Cassandra watches as he barrels through guards and doesn’t look back. His fingers slam into the stonework, sending fragments of the wall scattering at the impact, dust falling around him, and in moments he’s scaled the small wall and flung himself off the other side.

‘Bye Grog, you fucking asshole,’ Cassandra hears at her right ear, and a lithe figure is keeping pace with her there. Vax grins, teeth flashing white. ‘You coming?’

‘Coming,’ Cassandra nods, ignoring the pain in her side and the shortness of her breath. ‘ _Go_ ,’ she hisses, seeing Vax hesitate.

With another moment of hesitation, the half-elf darts ahead and disappears.

It doesn’t hurt.

It _doesn’t_ hurt; he let her out of the cell, he has Pike, none of them have to wait for her, she’ll get out of this like she gets out of everything—a mix of obnoxious flattery, dumb luck, and bald-faced lies.

That’s how it would happen—or not—if she were alone.

But then she’s approaching the wall and she glances over her shoulder and sees the line of guards, the smug victory on the helmetless Warden. The gleam of a dozen crossbows lined up and pointed at her back.

There is nothing left but to run so Cassandra pushes as best as she can.

Feels something _pop_ in her side, feels the burning that accompanies it. Keeps going.

Feels shards and flecks of stone dig into the soles of her feet. Keeps going.

Ahead of her, something glints in the moonlight around the wall where she is headed. Cassandra would be terrified if she could feel anything except exhausted right now. And then relief consumes the fear and the exhaustion and pushes her forward on a wave of exhilaration and potent _hope_ as Vax reappears ahead of her, two wicked looking daggers flung out toward the line of guards with a neat flick of his wrists. The blades cut through the air on either side of her, faster than she can even see, and she hears two wet gurgles followed by two _thumps_ behind her, and then it feels like the ground _explodes—_ stone shards scattering across her back—and when she turns to look to see what the _fuck_ that could have been, there is a hewn boulder crashed into the courtyard and guards blown backwards onto the ground, and when Cassandra looks ahead again, Vax is laughing and putting wet blades back onto his belt, and he grabs her by arm and yells something that she can’t hear, not beyond the ringing in her ears, and an enormous arm reaches down—grey and bulging with veins—and grabs her by the scruff of the neck and pulls her up and over the wall and they’re out.


	3. A Certain Standard Is Expected From Those Who Camp In The Middle Of A Swamp

They disappear into the swamp.

The trees grow close together here, their branches hanging low and dripping with muck like oil. The half-elf seems to know a path through the muck because he leaps from log to stone to mostly-solid earth leaving little more than the occasional boot print behind him. The goliath doesn’t bother with sneaking; he keeps Pike scooped up in the crook of his elbow and wades sometimes waist deep through the swamp that sucks ineffectively at him, apparently heedless of Vax’s exasperation.

‘Stay out of that stuff, Grog.’

‘Why? If somethin’ follows me, I’ll kill it.’

‘You think some guards are your problem?’ Vax reappears not far ahead, as suddenly as though he had stepped out of a puff of smoke. He stands on a log that squishes beneath even his light steps, a thick greenish liquid oozing from the wood. ‘They’re not. If you loose one of Vex’s boots—one of her _boots_ , Grog—in this swamp…’ He lifts an eyebrow meaningfully.

Grog’s face falls. ‘Oh shit.’

‘Oh shit,’ Vax nods.

‘Right. I’ll just…follow you then, shall I?’

‘Seems wise, big man.’

Cassandra keeps quiet, using the conversation as a brief respite. Her breath comes ragged and burns a little in her side where her lungs strain but she doesn’t mention it, just leans against a sopping tree and waits for the half-elf to call for them to push on again.

‘How much more?’ Grog asks. With a quick look, Cassandra can see that he doesn’t look tired; it seems more like he enjoys the way Vax’s shoulders click up around his ears, tight and tense.

‘You came this way with me, Grog.’

‘Yeah, but I forget. No good with numbers, you know that.’

‘I…do, I do.’

‘So? How much more to go?’

Vax sighs. ‘A little bit.’

‘…Do you know?’

‘ _Yes_ , I know how far it is.’

‘Well? How far is it?’

‘It’s a while, Grog.’

‘…Alright,’ the goliath shrugs, likely because Pike elbows him in the gut to make him stop.

There are no twigs to crack underfoot in the swamp—that is, there are twigs but they function more like vines, soft and wet. Still, Cassandra hears the suck of wet earth as someone steps up behind her and she turns to find Dreg at her shoulder.

‘I think it’s best we part here,’ she tells Cassandra quietly.

Cassandra feels more than sees the three pairs of eyes watching them from across the clearing. She glances over her shoulder to check; Pike and Vax seem to be deeply fascinated by a mushroom clinging to a nearby tree.

Grog is staring right at her and Dreg, watching.

Dreg turns away from him so they can pretend he isn’t.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dreg continues. ‘But I’ve got no interest in bein’ pinched again. There’s safety by m’self.’

‘I…understand,’ Cassandra says, because she does. ‘Of course I do.’

Dreg eyes her. ‘But yer gonna go with them.’

Cassandra thinks about the money waiting for her in Stilben and nods. ‘I’m more of a safety in numbers type. Thank you for helping me.’ _I owe you_ , the Cassandra of old thinks, reflexively. This Cassandra doesn’t even begin to say it.

‘Would’ve done a lot more to get out’v that place. You did good. Skal.’

‘Skal. Dao korvhien drammin, Dreg.’

Eyes gleaming in the watery moonlight, Dreg shakes her head. ‘Dreg was a given name. I reckon…a new name from now on. For victory.’

Cassandra recalls a fragment of history, of a story long-buried. _Orcs and the half-orc brethren of the Northern Expanse are often named for great successes and failures in their lives by the leader of their clans, with the belief that names can instil fear into the hearts of enemies or rouse respect within the clan. Some clans rename their members and may own many names throughout their lifetime as they continually strive to best their own accomplishments, forever growing stronger for their dangers they push themselves through._

‘It is the Dakkoval way. What do you think of…Kreel?’

‘Kreel Greyhold,’ Cassandra muses. When Kreel raises a brow, she shrugs. Finishes the gesture despite a voice in the back of her mind she will never quiten that reminds her that _shrugging does not become a lady_. ‘You can attack them from the outside just by living. If you want. Only think how furious Warden would be if she heard you wandering around with her name. Stealing from the rich. Reminding them all of the place that couldn’t hold you.’

‘Kreel na-Dreg Greyhold.’ Kreel grins, baring her roughly filed tusks. ‘I like this. Do you want a new name too?’ She must find her answer in the expression that flits across Cassandra’s face, because she moves quickly on. ‘I will make much noise and mess. Make it look like you all came with me,’ she tells them all, before she nods to Cassandra again. ‘Skal, Cassandra.’

With that, she is gone. She disappears toward the murky treeline, the mists swallowing her up before she even reaches it.

‘Nice lady,’ Grog says. ‘Strong.’

Vax nods. ‘Let’s keep moving. We have a lot of ground to cover before we can rest.’

‘You _just_ said we were almost there.’

‘I lied, Grog.’

‘Aw, I hate it when you do that.’

Vax chuckles. He jumps from the log and moves toward the trees, away from where Kreel—once Dreg—had gone. ‘You coming?’

Cassandra turns to look back over her shoulder one final time in the direction of the Grey Hold. It is no longer visible, but her mind’s eye places it against the backdrop of the dark sky, silhouetted by the moon and the fog that clings to everything tonight, and around it a moat of pressing muck and vines.

She turns, putting it firmly behind her for good.

‘I’m coming.’

* * *

They continue on for some time, the other talking quietly amongst themselves—mostly Vax as he catches Pike up on what she had missed over the past few days. Cassandra listens intently and learns nothing much of note, except that the half-elf’s name is apparently Vax’ildan and his belt has a name too. Simon.

Mostly, Vax’ildan flits back and forth between the trail ahead and his friends as he talks. He does his best to guide them to where they’ll leave less of a trail of deep footprints. It helps a little, but swamp doesn’t seem to be where he does the majority of his skulking and even with his best efforts, Cassandra knows that a trained tracker won’t have trouble following them.

Occasionally, an unreadable expression on his face, Vax’ildan comes back to Cassandra.

On the last of these occasions, their pace slows significantly as they approach a light that flickers just beyond a barrier of twining trunks and branches that have grown thicker with time to crush against one another to form a natural wall. Vax’ildan stops Cassandra, his hand outstretched to block her path.

‘I want to make something clear, my friend,’ he says, displaying an impressive ability to make the word sound its immediate opposite. ‘I don’t know why you were stuck in that pit. I don’t much care. I don’t exactly have the moral high ground to judge.’ He smiles sweetly, the smile not touching his eyes, and Cassandra is very aware all of a sudden that they are in the middle of a swamp with plenty of places to hide a body. Or, gods, to just leave it. With miles and miles of treacherous land and sprawling muck, her body would never be found. ‘If you come with us, fine, but you pull your weight. You fight whatever we fight, you face it, follow our plan. You help us and do a good job, we drop you off safe in Stilben. If you run when things get sticky, though,’ he claps a hand on her shoulder, ‘I will put a dagger between your ribs faster than you can say _mercy_. Get me?’

‘Crystal clear, _friend_ ,’ Cassandra agrees, injecting a hint of that same derision into the word. She shrugs his hand off her shoulder. ‘Lay on, NacDoff.’

* * *

Beyond the thicket wall is a campsite.

A relatively cosy one, actually—as cosy as one can make it in the midst of a dangerous swamp. The fire burns with an odd purple-red hue and seems a fraction cooler than it ought to. Still, it burns cheerily enough, crackling brightly and smelling of the familiar and sweet scent of burning wood and sap, and it looks to be roasting the creature strung up over it.

‘We’re ho-ome,’ Vax’ildan sing-songs, pushing back the curtain of bramble and vine. 'Ow!' He sucks his thumb into his mouth.

'Alright, Vax?'

'I'm fine. Pricked my thumb.'

He holds the bramble curtain open for Pike; drops it with a cheeky grin just in time for Grog to walk into it.

‘Hey!’

At the fireside sits another gnome. Tan, dark-haired and handsome, he wears clothes ill-suited to the terrain but well-suited to him. A purple silk blouse gleams and glitters in the play of the firelight. The neck of it is open to his mid-chest, letting a few dark curls peek through the V. His tongue is caught between his teeth, attention focused on the round-bellied lute that sits on his lap as he tried to repair the case, but he glances up when they step into the pool of light the fire casts. When he sees them, he sends out a dazzling smile that encompasses them all, but seems specifically intended for Cassandra. Then again, she sees as each of her companions pauses in their step long enough for her to understand they all felt the exact same thing.

‘Pike! Oh _Pike_ , welcome back! How was it? Terrible? Awful?’ He raises his brows, smile turning suggestive. ‘Kind of fun?’

‘You’re still here, are you?’ Pike retorts, so sweetly it takes a moment for the sting of it to hit. She laughs when the man clutches dramatically at his heart, groaning. ‘Cass, this is Scanlan. Scanlan, this is my – um – prison cellmate? Cassandra.’

‘Charmed.’ Scanlan nods to her, but his eyes don’t stray from Pike for long.

‘Likewise.’

‘So, you should keep an eye on your things around him,’ Pike tells Cassandra in a loud whisper.

Cassandra nods. ‘You’re a thief, then?’

‘Ah, no,’ Vax’ildan drawls from Cassandra’s left shoulder. She does her best not to flinch at his sudden reappearance. ‘That would be me. But he _does_ like to take shits where he shouldn’t. It’s part of his charm—sort of like a badly trained pet. A monkey, maybe.’

‘A _singing_ monkey,’ Scanlan corrects, his grin not the least bit diminished by the topic of conversation. ‘Allow me to introduce myself properly—Scanlan Shorthalt, bard extraordinaire! Wanderer, scholar, entertainer. Lover, student and occasionally teacher.’ He waggles his brows suggestively, leaving it up to her to imagine what he might be teaching. ‘Gnome of incredible talent, master of word and wit,’

‘And dick,’ Grog laughs.

Scanlan bows again with a grand flourish this time, sleeves nearly dragging on the ground. ‘Thank you, Grog, exactly so.’

The goliath salutes him, finding a spot by the fire to sit. ‘You’re welcome.’

Scanlan stands straight again. Brushes a fleck of muck from his sleeve. Above his wide, handsome smile, his dark eyes fix Cassandra with an intense focus. ‘And who might you be?’

Cassandra feels herself hunch, not enjoying the attention of one who seems so much a practiced liar. A bone grinds against bone within her chest. She pretends it doesn’t.

‘Cassandra.’

‘Yes, I got that,’ Scanlan prods.

Cassandra pretends not to notice his prodding. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you. Is this everyone?’ Her gaze drifts with polite intent toward the figure hidden at the edge of the firelight.

Pike follows her gaze. She squints. ‘Who’s that?’

Scanlan glances over his shoulder. Plucks at the lute. ‘That’s Keyleth.’

‘Who?’

‘She’s a druid,’ he explains, tone drifting toward bored. ‘She got mixed up in the whole cursing of the swamp thing me and Grog were trying to fix.’ He plucks a somewhat familiar tune on the lute. Heroic. The kind of thing that might accompany a retelling of an epic tale. Cassandra watches in fascination as, right there on the spot he seems to improvise a jaunty tune that moves in and around that hero’s stanza. His fingers are sure and certain on the instrument and it’s entirely purposeful the way the tune rolls—drunkenly, amateurishly—in and out of harmony with the original tune. He leans closer to them, drops his voice to a loud stage whisper. ‘She seems to think fixing it together makes us a _team._ Followed us out of Stilben like a lost puppy.’ He smirks. ‘Literally. Transformed into a dog.’

‘Technically, a dog is only a puppy when it’s still growing and she transformed into an adult dog,’ Vax’ildan points out.

‘A bitch, then,’ Grog says, and laughs. Pike smacks him hard on his back where she can reach him. ‘Ow! Sorry, Pike.’

‘Sorry _Keyleth_.’

‘Right. Sorry, Keyleth.’

‘Oh that’s alright. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that joke.’

Cassandra starts. In all the back-and-forth, she had almost forgotten about the person hiding—poorly—in the shadows. Now, though, a woman steps forward and she is reminded.

Tall and lithe, she’s dressed like… The first thing that comes to mind is that she is dressed like a gardener. Comfortable working clothes and a small pack slung over her shoulder that looks to be brimming with cuttings and root vegetables and loamy earth. She has dirt smudged across one cheek and a handful of leaves are messed in her hair—purposefully or by mistake, Cassandra isn’t sure. Disappearing into vibrant red hair is a circlet of woven vine and on either side of her head, perhaps attached to the circlet, perhaps natural, are two small antlers.

The woman laughs a quiet, nervous laugh. Wiggles her fingers in a wave. When she does, a spark of green magic flares around her fingers and flowers appear in the air; her eyes widen and she hurries to try and catch them, kneeling in the dirt to gather them up and put them into the pack on her side.

‘Oops – sorry – oh gosh, that happens sometimes. When I’m not thinking.’ Her red hair is long and falls in a wild tangle over her shoulders and her face. When she tucks it back behind her ears, her fingers leave new streaks of dirt on her skin.

To the side, Cassandra hears the bard mutter, ‘ _Oh dear gods.’_

The druid— _Keyleth_ —doesn’t seem to hear. If she does, she ignores him to smile at Cassandra instead. Her eyes are a brilliant green. Not sharp and bright like emeralds but warm and speckled with golds and browns like a verdant forest floor, and she is far too close to Cassandra if she is able to notice things like this. Her hand reaches up—Cassandra watches it, confused—and she tucks a pale little flower behind Cassandra’s ear. Her fingers are warm. And caked with dirt. She smiles a too-big crooked smile down into Cassandra’s face.

‘There, doesn’t that look just darling?’ Her smile—already enormous—grows wider, her nose crinkling. ‘And it’s good new. There’ll be fair weather here tomorrow!’

‘Ah. Alright.’

‘If the flowers had been dark, there would be a storm but they’re not! Pretty and white,’ she laughs, and tucks the remaining handful into her garden pouch on her hip.

Cassandra is still trying to figure out how to deal with all of…that…when Vax’ildan speaks up. ‘That is good news,’ he says, and his tone is surprisingly gentle. He catches Cassandra’s eyes on him and his expression smooths over cold again. ‘So. This is almost all of us,’ he tells her, spreading his arms wide. ‘And for tonight, this is home sweet home.’

‘Almost?’

‘I mean no offence—except to you, Scanlan, you can go fuck yourself - ’

‘Halfway there already, my man.’

‘ – when I say that the best has been saved for last. Sister dear? Care to introduce yourself to our newest tag-along?’

From directly above them—in a very clever woven platform slung across drooping branches that Cassandra hadn’t noticed until her attention was pulled right to it—Cassandra hears a grumbled, ‘No.’

‘Vex,’

‘I gave you _one_ instruction, brother. What was it?’

‘To bring back Pike safe and sound. And look! I did! Say hello, Pike.’

‘Hello, Pike,’ Pike cheerfully calls, and Grog laughs.

Cassandra has never met the woman but she can _hear_ the way she rolls her eyes. ‘Fine. I gave you _two_ instructions. What was the other one?’

Vax’ildan scratches his cheek, trying to hide a smirk under his hand. ‘Hmm. _Two_ instructions? No, I don’t seem to recall— _ow_!’ A seed pod _thunks_ on the top of his skull and he rubs at the tender spot. ‘That hurt!’

‘It was supposed to. What did I say, brother?’

‘…Don’t bring back any more strays?’

‘Don’t bring back any more _fucking_ strays.’

There’s the tap of a boot above them and then Vax’ildan sidesteps as a dark-clad body drops down into the space exactly where he had been standing. It is strange, for a moment, watching the two of them fight because in the strange firelight they look entirely identical. They own the same slight build, the same dark, delicate features. His shoulders are perhaps a touch slimmer, and at first she looks to have lost the same inch from her height, but then Cassandra sees that the other woman is going barefoot as well. Though, judging from the look of distaste as she pulls her foot from a sunken clod of mud and soft leaf matter, not by choice. Even their voices sound similar as they begin to squabble in low, hushed tones. Finally, they both spin to look at Cassandra and she can only pick out the newcomer from the two of them by the blue feathers she wears tucked behind her ear. It’s hard to tell with half elves but if Cassandra had to guess, she would put them at early twenties. Late twenties at a stretch.

‘Vex’ahlia,’ the woman says for an introduction, tone terse. There is no true anger in her expression, but there is plenty in the way of suspicion and aggravation. The latter is mostly directed toward her brother. Pursing her lips, she glares intently at Cassandra; dark eyes appraise her as a trained jeweller would appraise a gemstone, searching first for the facets and flaws. She takes in the ill-fitting clothes, the bare feet coated in mud to the knees, the sword held in a white-knuckled grip. Pale skin and eyes and hair. Cassandra wonders whether the sharp-eyed girl had felt the urge—however momentary—to defend the camp, to shoot her with that bow slung over her back, when she had seen her brother and friends from her perch in the treetop and following behind them, a ghost come to haunt.

Vex’ahlia quirks a dark eyebrow, a question written clearly in her eyes.

‘ _Your name_ ,’ Vax’ildan whispers. He tries to lean against his sister’s shoulder and she shrugs him away. Smirks when he nearly falls into the muck.

‘Oh. Oh, yes.’ Her hands feel cold all of a sudden and awkward. What is she supposed to do with them? Lock them behind her back? Should she curtsey? Definitely not. _A handshake, then_ , she thinks and looks down in dismay at her free hand. The palm is filthy with grime, the nails caked with months of it and cracked; she wipes it on the cleanest part of her coat, which is far from clean, and holds it out toward Vex’ahlia. Shame burns in her cheeks and she lifts her chin proudly to counter it. ‘Cassandra.’

‘Cassandra.’ The other woman clasps her hand. ‘My brother found you in prison, is that what I heard?’ Cassandra nods. ‘And brought you back here. Of course he did,’ she mutters, more to herself than to Cassandra. ‘Great. Super.’

‘If you two are _quite_ done flirting,’ Vax’ildan drawls.

Vex’ahlia drops her hand like it’s scorching hot. Crosses her arms over her chest. Ignoring her brother, she asks, ‘Why were you in jail, then? Did you kill someone?’

‘Actually, Vex,’ Pike calls from her place next to Grog, ‘I was informed pretty quickly that is _not_ the kind of question you ask someone.’ She sounds rather cheerful about it, a fact Cassandra attributes to the almost empty tankard of some frothing mead or ale in her hand. Her friend, Grog, is in the middle of generously topping it up for her. A moustache of the froth sits over her upper lip; she swipes it away with the back of her hand, causing the manacles to jingle on her wrists.

‘Thank you, Pike,’ Vex says, showing the same adoration her brother does for the little healer. The adoration fades back to shrewd deliberation when her eyes return to Cassandra. ‘Well?’

‘I did not.’

‘Have you?’

When Cassandra hesitates, Vex’ahlia’s posture gentles; her hands fall from sharp angles braced on her hips to hang loose at her side and she tilts her head like she’s inviting Cassandra to share. Her eyes are dark and inviting and suddenly the sensation of an interrogation is all but gone.

‘I have to ask because we’re on our way to finish a job. There might be killing involved. Vax said you’re coming with us?’

She barely sounds annoyed at all. Cassandra is deeply impressed, though she doesn’t show it; she knows of city investigators whose entire jobs are information who can finesse an interrogation with less grace than this woman.

‘I can do what needs to be done.’

Vex’ahlia’s eyes flick over her face, searching for a lie in the set of her expression. Finally, she nods. ‘Alright. Camp rules, then. We all pitch in for chores. You make your own bed, look after your own shit, but one night a week you cook dinner and clean the dishes for everyone. No one is exempt.’

‘ _Not even Vex. Unfortunately_ ,’ someone mutters from the fire.

Vex’ahlia gives no indication that she heard, save the faintest upward tick of her lips. ‘We all pull our weight in the fights, which means we share gold pretty much evenly, though we have a party fund for healing supplies and if we need new shit, the gold goes to that first. Understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. The rules are simple,’ she explains, voice bland but her eyes suddenly bright with mischief, ‘because we have some pretty stupid members.’ Her head tilts then, not toward Grog but instead toward her own brother.

‘I heard that,’ Vax’ildan complains, but he doesn’t disagree. He waves his sister over impatiently and with one more searching stare, Vex’ahlia makes her way to him.

Cassandra feels a bewildered frown tug at her brow.

It all feels entirely, impossibly strange.

Only hours before, she had been locked in her cell and could only dream of escape. And now here she is, with the oddest rag-tag collection of adventurers who are letting her tag along with the bare minimum of questions.

Cassandra’s hand sneaks to her opposite arm. She pinches at the skin there. Solid. Cold. Real.

‘Cassandra. Cassandra,’ Pike calls. ‘Don’t just stand there, come and eat.’

‘Yeah,’ Grog agrees. He begins to pile a plate high with food and holds it out for Cassandra to take. ‘You’re all…’ He frowns. ‘Bony.’

‘It’s the bones,’ Vax’ildan tells him.

Grog nods as though that’s the wisest thing he’s ever heard.

‘You _do_ look half-starved,’ Keyleth agrees worriedly.

‘More than,’ Pike reveals cheerfully. ‘Eat first. You don’t want to drink on an empty stomach.’

Feeling very much like she’s only delaying the inevitable questions— _so why were you_ really _in prison, who are you, where did you get that sword, what are your plans, where are you going next_ —Cassandra slinks over to sit by Pike. She doesn’t have any answers to those questions, not even for herself, so she lowers her head and doesn’t make eye contact in the vain hope no one will ask.

For a short while, it is all very awkward.

Then, with a great groan of dismay, Vax’ildan throws himself across the camp—nearly leaps right through the fire—to land next to Pike. His boot slips on the slick wood of the log and he nearly falls before catching himself, arms pinwheeling.

‘Hey-ey! Stuck the landing!’ he announces when he’s steady and he strikes a pose.

The musician—Scanlan—shakes his head. ‘Very poor form. Four out of ten. And only because he’s pretty,’ he says to Keyleth, who ducks her head.

‘Four? That was at least worth a five,’ Vex’ahlia argues. ‘He _jumped_ through _fire_.’

‘And stumbled on the final pirouette. And that landing – no static silhouette to it at all. No. My decision is final—I’m sticking with the four. And he’s lucky to get that much.’

‘Well I’m giving it a six.’

‘Nepotism,’ Scanlan scoffs.

Cassandra privately agrees. While no one is watching, she tucks some of the less perishable of the food into her bag.

‘Deciding vote is Keyleth’s,’ Vex’ahlia says. ‘Darling?’

‘Me?’

‘ _Her_?’

‘Yes _her_.’ Vex’ahlia smiles winningly at the druid. ‘What do you think? Pass or fail? And do hurry up—Vax is getting sore arms.’

Vax’ildan nods, arms still held in his pose.

‘Oh. Um. I don’t—five?’ she says, and Cassandra suspects she chose it because it fit nicely between Scanlan’s four and Vex’ahlia’s six. She looks as spooked as Cassandra feels when Vax’ildan hoots, pumps his fist in the air.

‘A pass! Wow! If academic achievement had felt _half_ as incredible as that, I never would’ve left school.’ The joke goes right over Cassandra’s head, but it makes Vex’ahlia laugh, and since that seemed to have been its purpose, Vax’ildan sits now between Cassandra and Pike, straddling the log. She can hear his smile. ‘Hello, Pickle.’

‘I would’ve given you a two.’

‘Yes, well, you’re a holy woman, you have to be honest,’ he agrees. ‘Let’s see about getting these cuffs off, hey? Can’t have our cleric looking like some kind of common thief.’

‘Can’t have our cleric unable to use magic,’ Pike grumbles.

She holds her hands out for Vax to work on. He examines the cuffs for a short while, twisting them this way and that, before starting on them. Reminded of it now, Cassandra removes from a pocket in her coat the waxed-leather packet of lockpicks that Vax had lent her, as well as a ring of the keys she had filched from the guard post.

‘Pardon me,’ she calls softly. ‘These might help. Might.’

He twists in place, takes them with an ‘Aha!’ The lockpicks he secrets away somewhere on his person with little more than a flick of his wrist; the keys he examines closely and, with a practised eye for these sorts of things, it doesn’t take him long to find one that fits. A moment passes, metal scraping against metal, and then with a quiet _click_ and the squeal of slightly rusted metal _,_ the manacles swing open. Vax eases them off Pike’s wrists and starts to massage the skin beneath, working blood back into her hands.

‘Thank you,’ Pike murmurs.

‘That’s not even the best part,’ Vax assures her. Moving with extreme care, he pulls from a fold in his cloak what looks like a small alabaster statue. Cassandra can’t make out any detail save for two tall wings.

‘Oh _Vax_.’ Pike almost lunges for it; she takes it from him, clutching it to her chest, and for an instant Cassandra sees again that bright nimbus that had been so faint in the cell. It flares around the little healer, heat bursting across the entirety of their campsite, and Pike laughs a little soggily. Sniffles. Swipes at her nose. ‘You found her,’ she whispers. ‘I thought they’d taken her.’

‘They did. Grog found her, actually.’

‘Grog?’

‘I did,’ the goliath nods, and he folds himself nearly double to accept the hug his friend gives him. ‘Wouldn’t be the same without her, would it?’

‘No. No it wouldn’t.’

Pike pulls the statue onto a fine chain and loops it around her neck, adjusting it until it sits against her chest perfectly.

‘Oh, are – you gonna pray right now?’ Grog asks. ‘Um…Do you want me t’ hold your ale?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Alright.’

* * *

As the fire dims, the watch is divided up between them all. It is unanimously decided—by everyone except Pike—that Pike and Cassandra rest for the full night.

‘You can take a watch tomorrow, Pike,’ Vex’ahlia insists. ‘For now, you just need to rest. I have no doubt we’ll need all your strength tomorrow.’

Pike doesn’t look like she believes her but she gives in. Begrudgingly. ‘Wanna sleep with me?’ she offers to Cassandra.

‘Prison really changes you,’ Scanlan calls from the other side of the fire.

Somewhere in the shadows, Vax’ildan laughs.

Grog does too. Then, ‘I don’t get it.’

‘That’s okay, Grog.’ Pike pats his arm. ‘Do you have any more bedrolls? One for me, one for Cassandra.’

‘Sure, Pikey.’

‘Some extra clothes too, if we have them,’ Vex’ahlia asks him from her place at Cassandra’s shoulder. She is flipping through the pages of a small, leather-bound book and if she notices the way her sudden appearance makes Cassandra jump, she doesn’t mention it. ‘And boots. I think we have some—look, yes, here—black boots, fine boots, winter boots—‘

‘What do we have winter boots for?’

‘You nicked them,’ she reminds her twin. ‘From that trader, the one from the north.’

‘Oh _yes_. Not good for a swamp. Don’t give her those—you’ll get swamp-foot,’ he warns.

Cassandra glances down at her bare feet, covered in the muck, and back up at him. ‘Yes,’ she drawls. ‘That would be awful.’

Vex’ahlia snorts very quietly. Clears her throat. ‘The black boots will be fine. Grog?’

‘Comin’ up.’ Grog shoves his hand into the bag. Cassandra watches, expecting his hand to impact with the bottom of it but to her surprise he continues to reach in until he’s nearly up to his shoulder. Then, loud as thunder, he calls out, ‘BOOTS!’

‘You only have to _think_ it, big man,’ Vax complains. He sticks his little finger into his ear, wriggles it about.

Grog grunts. ‘PIECE OF PAPER THAT SAYS VAX CAN TALK TO ME LIKE I’M STUPID _,’_ he calls. Waits a moment, then pulls out an empty hand. ‘Huh. Weird. There isn’t one. Guess it’s my bag, my rules, _little man_. BOOTS!’ He pulls from the bag a pair of ankle high boots of soft, black leather. They’re far from new, scuffed on the toes and the heel nearly worn smooth, but they look very serviceable and much better than walking around barefoot.

Taking them with a ‘Thank you’, she sits to pull them on, wiping first at the clinging muck on her feet. It’s largely ineffective and she winces, feeling the soles scraped and bruised and tattered in places from running across stone and all manner of bark and twigs and sharp pointy stuff scattered across the swampland. Preparing herself for the sensation of mud clinging between her toes for days to come, she pulls them on.

Pike steps over to her, sets a hand on her elbow.

Before Cassandra can speak, a flood of warmth—a mug of hot tea in her hand barely shy of burning, like noon in the Verdant Gardens, like the billow of heat from roaring furnaces in the smith’s workshop—courses through her body and begins to knit up the open wounds below her shirt, burn out the infection starting to set in. It somehow realigns her cracked rib with a _pop_ Pike clearly hears, judging from the way her brow furrows.

‘That didn’t even get to your poor feet,’ she says. Cassandra doesn’t know how she knows that, but she does; she sounds absolutely certain, like there is a map in her mind of Cassandra’s body and all the places that aren’t whole and healthy are marked with a glaring X. ‘And your poor face.’

‘I’m fine,’ Cassandra assures her. ‘You’ve done plenty.’

It is in this moment that Cassandra learns, as all the others in the party have, that there is nothing anyone can tell Pike Trickfoot if she doesn’t wish to hear it.

Pike’s eyes flash summer hot. ‘I’ll be the judge of that, thanks,’ she tells her sternly, and she grabs Cassandra’s hand this time. Her other hand reaches up to clasp around the symbol at her neck—the amulet Cassandra realises now Pike had been missing all that time in the cell, the one she hadn’t wasted a moment returning to its place when Vax’ildan had returned it to her, the one she mostly touches with soft pets, just reminding herself that yes, it’s there again, and that she now clutches at desperately. When she does, the nimbus of light returns. Shimmers like the cast-off light from a diamond with hints of every imaginable colour. The light moves. Travels down her shoulders and gathers in her chest, around the amulet, before it shoots down her arm and wrist and into the hand joined with Cassandra’s.

Finally, Pike lets her hand fall away.

She fixes Cassandra with such an intent stare it is as though they are the only two people in the world. ‘Tell me next time. _Before_ you get that bad.’

‘I’m not planning on getting hurt again,’ Cassandra drawls.

Pike narrows her eyes.

‘Uh oh. That’s her angry face.’ Grog puts a hand up to his mouth, but if he is trying to shield his words from Pike’s view, he sets his broad palm to the wrong side of his lips. ‘It’s best if you just agree,’ Grog warns, quietly for him. Still widely audible.

Cassandra tenses, preparing to—she doesn’t quite know yet. Assert herself? Unlikely. Lie? Almost definitely.

She stops. Takes a moment to identify what feels so strange about her body now. It isn’t the warmth—that came and went with the healing—and though the itch of newly grown scars remains, it isn’t that either.

It’s something else. An absence that makes her feel frighteningly weightless, and it takes a moment to drag through her memories to figure out what it is.

She doesn’t hurt.

For the first time in months, she’s not in pain.

She had forgotten what that felt like.

Cassandra’s eyes dip to the amulet and then to the ground. She clears her throat. ‘I will tell you next time,’ she agrees, and a small hand pats hers.

‘Thank you. C’mon, let’s—‘ Pike’s words are interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn. ‘Let’s get some sleep. I’ll warn you now—Grog snores.’

**Author's Note:**

> im unicyclehippo on tumblr too, come say hi or send me prompts or whatever u like


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